Holy Week Maundy Thursday The Last Supper 2011

The celebration Maundy Thursday – is from the Latin term “Mandatum” “Do this!”

( But see the latest news at the bottom - we may be a day early!)

Jesus gave his disciples then and gives us all today three mandatums or commands :

Receive the Eucharist- the Body and Blood of Christ;

Wash each other's feet

Remember our calling as baptized Christians.

To take, bless, break, and share the meal in equal fellowship and sustenance, as we’ve been fed – we are to feed others – manna in the wilderness for all.

To wash each others’ feet – a pattern of sacramental caring and reverence : a manner of servant living as shown and commanded by Jesus.

We are also given the mandate we often overlook on Maundy Thursday where we are called to celebrate – Tonight we have a tremendous gift that Jesus instituted to us for all time : by taking His body and blood we are all part of the priesthood of God.

We are called by our baptism and mandated to be like Jesus, each and everyone of us - man, woman, child, adult, rich, poor, highly educated or not, weak or strong, clergy or laity – each of us is called to a royal priesthood!

I have chosen two passages below that in very different ways attempt to get to the heart of what it means for us to approach the mystery of the Eucharist.

The first is by Carlo Caretto and the second by Ron Rolheiser.

Carlo Carretto was a leader in Italian "Catholic Action" and served as National President of Catholic Youth from 1946 to 1952. At the age of forty-four he heard the call of God to go into the desert. There he joined the Little Brothers of Jesus of Charles de Foucauld.

"The great joy of the Saharan novitiate is the solitude, and the joy of solitude - silence, true silence, which penetrates everywhere and invades one's whole being, speaking to the soul with wonderful new strength unknown to those to whom this silence means nothing.

Here, living in perpetual silence, one learns to distinguish its different shades: silence of the church, silence in one's cell, silence of work, interior silence, silence of the soul, God's silence.

To learn to live these silences, the novice-master lets us go away for a few days' "desert."

A hamper of bread, a few dates, some water, the Bible. A day's march: a cave.

Nick Mynheer

Chapelle de la Nativitie, Cordes -sur-Ciel, France

A priest celebrates Mass: then goes away, leaving in the cave on an altar of stones, the Eucharist. Thus, for a week one remains alone with the Eucharist exposed day and night.

Silence in the desert, silence in the cave, silence in the Eucharist.

No prayer is so difficult as the adoration of the Eucharist. One's whole natural strength rebels against it.

One would prefer to carry stones in the sun. The senses, memory, imagination, all are repressed. Faith alone triumphs, and faith is hard, dark, stark.

To place oneself before what seems to be bread and to say, "Christ is there living and true," is pure faith.

But nothing is more nourishing than pure faith, and prayer in faith is real prayer.

"There's no pleasure in adoring the Eucharist," one novice used to say to me. But it is precisely this renunciation of all desire to satisfy the senses that makes prayer strong and real.

This is crucial: as long as we pray only when and how we want to, our life of prayer is bound to be unreal. It will run in fits and starts. The slightest upset - even a toothache - will be enough to destroy the whole edifice of our prayer life.

Put yourself in front of Jesus as a poor man: not with any big ideas, but with living faith.

Remain motionless in an act of love before the Father.

Don't try to reach God with your understanding; that is impossible. Reach him in love; that is possible.

The struggle is not easy, because nature will try to get back her own, get her dose of enjoyment; but union with Christ Crucified is something quite different.

After some hours - or some days - of this exercise, the body relaxes. The will refuses to let it have its own way; it gives up the struggle. It becomes passive.

The senses go to sleep. Or rather, as St. John of the Cross says, the night of senses is beginning. Then prayer becomes something serious, even if it is painful and dry. So serious that one can no longer do without it. The soul begins to share the redemptive work of Jesus."

Fr. Ron Rolheiser tells this story:

“A friend of mine, an alcoholic in recovery, likes to explain the dynamics of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in this way: ‘It’s funny, the meetings are always the same – the exact same things get done or said over and over again.

Everything is pretty predictable; everyone, except those who are there for the first time, knows what will be said. And we’re not there to show our best side to each other.

I don’t go to AA meetings to share my talents, or to be a nice guy. No, I go because, if I don’t go, I know, and know for sure, that I will start drinking again and eventually destroy myself. It’s that simple. I go there to stay alive!’”

Fr. Ron goes on to say: “in a curious, but accurate way, that can also be a description of the Eucharist . Among many other reasons, we go to Eucharist, we wash each other’s feet, we serve and love as Jesus did, to “stay alive” – truly alive!

In this way we can only truly be free."

Aumbry - St Mary's Church, Iffley, Oxford

Nick Mynheer

So....

I pray that in the gift of life we receive from Jesus in the Eucharist this coming Holy Week we may come to experience freedom so we can truly become eucharistic people.

Below : A prayer by Michael Heunig

God help us to change. To change ourselves and to
change our world. To know the need for it. To deal
with the pain of it. To feel the joy of it. To undertake
the journey without understanding the destination.
The art of gentle revolution.

Amen.

Some beautiful music and images for reflection:

The Last Supper : By Mercy We Come To Your Table

This lovely song by Leeland is called

Carried To The Table

I Am The Bread of Life

The Servant Song

Love this but alternating sister and brother in the verses would make it even better!

Google+ Followers

Share It

My Poetry

My Poetry

RadioTalk on My Poetry

I Can Haz Music

Seamus Heaney Quotes

Click on Pic

More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave,But then, once in a lifetime,The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.So hope for a great sea changeOn the far side of revengeBelieve in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be:"I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame:"The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet:"My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority"At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Taize Chants

Click on the candle above for a collection of chants from Taize

Kyrie Chants

Click on Pic

Dynamite !!

“You Christians have in your keeping a document with enough dynamite in it to blow the whole of civilization to bits...” Mahatma Gandhi

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternityIan Bradley The Celtic Way

Guaranteed to Lift The Spirit

Click on Pic

A Concord Pastor Comments

Every Monday Morning join Fr Austin Fleming for a prayer . Click on the coffee cup for the archive

Sacred Space

Pope Francis Twitter Feed

A Big Heart Open To God

Pope Francis -How The Church Will Change

Dialogue between Pope Francis and Eugenio Scalfari:

Daily Meditations Pope Francis

Click on Pic

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”﻿

-- Pope Francis

L'Osservatore Romano English Version

Newspaper of The Holy See Click on Pic

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you. Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Playing For Change

Sites on Prayer

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. Butyou can reach out to them, and all day long.The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And""You can get all A's and still flunk life." "Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?" -Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

Disclaimer for Links

A link from my blog to another site is not intended as an automatic endorsement of its content.

Disclaimer

All the pictures and news shown on this blog (apart from where indicated as my own ), are the property of their respective owners. These pictures have been collected from different public sourses including different websites, considering to be in public domain. If any one has any objection to displaying of any picture and news, it may be brought to my notice by sending email & the same will be be removed immediately,after verificaton of the claim.

Fair Use Notice

This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit. Images and text are copyrighted to their respective authors and publishers. I don’t have any financial benefit from posting them. In the event that there is still a problem or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and non-commercial and the material will be removed immediately by request.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/